Wednesday, 25 April 2012

Herbie's Private March

Herbie’s Private March: Salute to an
Unsung ANZAC Hero

by Lorraine Cobcroft (the Rainbowriter)

He didn’t pin on medals and march on Anzac Day. He wasn’t honoured as a veteran on the day
they laid him to rest. His sacrifice is not one the esteemed and revered would care
to remember and his private march is one historians would be embarrassed to
record.

I remembered it, briefly, in my book, “The Pencil Case”.I honoured the man as he deserved to be
honoured: an ordinary bloke, who survived the persecution of the enemy to be brutally
tormented and ultimately destroyed by the
nation he suffered so much to honour and defend. A humble man who seldom
complained, worked hard, cherished his family and always wore a smile.

We used to routinely rise in darkness on Anzac Day… his son
and I…to pray and salute in the faint pink light before the dawn. We would
watch the sun rise behind a wreath-covered memorial, listen to the bagpipes and
the drums and watch the proud veterans lift their shoulders and stride to the
beat. We laid flowers at the foot of the memorial and placed hands over hearts
in memory of the fallen brave. Tears often welled at the mournful bugle call. Herbie’s
son always played “The Last Post” with with such feeling.

As a child, I routinely donned a starched white dress and
pinned my dad’s medals across my chest. I remember wondering, as I stepped into
the lines, what he would have thought of me had he lived to know me. I wondered
who he was, and what traits I might have inherited from him. His courage? His
strength? His commitment to fighting to defend the values he held dear and the
lifestyle he wanted his child to enjoy?

As a young mother, I lifted my children high to see their
uniformed father, cornet at his lips, near the front of the march.

Today, we take no part in the celebrations. My husband does
not join his veteran friends to toast a victory or salute the sacrifice of so
many. For us, now, it’s a day of fighting down anger at the cruel betrayal of
an unsung hero. It’s a day to remember Herbert’s private march and to grieve
the awful message that his story carries.

Herbert Cobcroft wasn’t killed in war. The enemy killed
neither his body nor his spirit. Not the shrapnel that shattered his legs nor
the tuberculosis that scarred his lungs carried him to death’s door. Neither
the bullying Japanese guards in the prison camp he dwelt in for three years, nor
the maggots that gnawed at his wounded flesh, broke him.

After three years behind wire in a foreign land, he returned
home to a lover and the life he knew before it all began. He wore long trousers
to cover his flesh wounds and took an oath of silence to cover scars of another
kind. He donned his bush hat, tied on his pack and rode out behind the cattle
herd. He broke horses and wove whips and won applause as a gun shearer. He
worked hard and drank hard and his wife toiled in his humble little cottage and
the vegie garden out back to help him feed the beloved children who were his
greatest joy.

Then the nation he fought to defend achieved what the enemy
could not. The people he fought beside and for killed his soul.

Herbert’s private march was a week-long trek powered by a
heart filled with hope, followed by adefeated
week-long crawl nursing a heart battered and broken by the cruelty of the
society he had fought for, and the heartlessness lies and hatred of so-called ‘’women
of God’’.

Two years before his march, a bureaucrat came to visit the
struggling veteran’s family. Herbie had hurt his back in a fall from a horse
and hadn’t worked for a time. He’d moved his family to a humble shack and
struggled to keep five small children clothed and fed. His means didn’t stretch
to buying enough blankets to give each their own separate bed. But his kids
were warm and happy. They were wrapped in thick layers of love.

The bureaucrat didn’t bother to tell Herbie he was entitled
to veteran’s benefits to help ease his burden. He didn’t offer to help him fill
in a pension application form. But he completed forms for him: forms that
charged his beloved children with the ‘’crime’’ of being neglected. He relieved
Herbie of the responsibility of caring for five by loading three into a black
car and taking them far away. He took three children to a forbidding brick
building where fearsome women in black robes would beat the devil out of “the fruit
of scum” and society’s misguided charity would condemn them to a life in
sterile dormitories, marching to the sound of bells and snapping to harsh
orders, wearing the brand of the unwashed and unwanted, and never again
experiencing the joy of a simple hug.

Herbie’s march was a mission to find the babies whose loss
made his wife weep at night. He marched to find his son and daughters, and bring
them home. He went to the right place. It took a week of walking to reach that
huge brick tower. He knocked respectfully at the door.

The nuns had seen him lumbering wearily up that long drive.
They had herded the children up the stairs and into dormitories where they
locked them away for their safety.

“You must be mistaken,” the black-clad witch said, sneering
at the grubby tramp. She’d opened the door just the barest crack and stood
pressed hard against it. Her sisters were busy locking windows.

“No children by those names have ever lived here.”

Herbie’s nine-year-old son watched the departing shadow. He
was nearly forty when he learned that had he called to the man, his father
might have recognized his cry and turned back to him. His father loved him. His
father had come for him. He was twenty-six before he heard from his father
again.

The letters were all burned. The gifts they sent were set
aside with cards removed. The boy received a little boat one Christmas. It was
one of the few Christmas gifts the child was ever given. He was thirty-eight
when he finally learned it was a gift sent by his mother.

The court said the lad should be sent home at age twelve, but
the bureaucrat who interviewed the parents who so desperately wanted their son
sent home signed a statutory declaration declaring he was unable to locate
them.

The court said the boy should leave care at fifteen and fend
for himself. The ‘’’Boss’’ at the Boys’ Home thought him too immature to be set
free. He forced him to sign an eight-year contract with the army. The
bureaucrat who visited his dad asking for parental consent claimed his parents
were nowhere to be found. The boy’s brothers remember their angry father
shouting that he’d never let his boy wear uniform; not after what this ‘’grand
nation’’ did to him.

The boy went home when he was twenty-six. A brother found
him, and he, in turn, found six siblings he had never known. He returned to the
bosom of a mother who had cried for him for eighteen years. He returned to play
the cornet for an adoring dad who, though loving and enjoying five younger
sons, had never stopped longing for the return of his first boy.

Herbie toiled to past his sixtieth year, sick and scarred
from those years in a war prison and broken by the loss of three of his twelve
children, and the tragic death of one in infancy.

He never drew a cent of veteran’s benefits. Nobody ever told
him he had that right.

He wore a happy smile most of the time. He laughed a lot. He
taught his children that every day brought a fresh challenge, a chance to do a
kindness for someone. Excepting in the small hours of the morning, when he
confided in the love of his life, he never spoke of the tortures he endured.

Six sons carried Herbert to his final rest. His two eldest
daughters came to grieve. That sad day saw the realization of his lifelong
dream. They were all there together. His family was at last reunited. But
Herbert was gone. The body from which the soul had long since departed had
finally conceded.

We don’t rise before dawn on Anzac Day now. We don’t attend
the march and we don’t join the celebrations. But we remember Herbie’s private
march: the march of a soldier betrayed by his own; the march of an unsung hero.

Soon to be released, “The Pencil Case”, by Lorraine Cobcroft, is the
slightly fictionalized biography of Herbert’s stolen son (Names have been
changed in the book).

A heart-wrenching story, it tells how the memories of his dad’s optimism
and spirit helped a child survive deprivation, abuse and cruel family
separation. Finally reunited with his family at age twenty-six, he continues to
struggle with the loss of his identity and self-worth. Now a prisoner of his
own mind, he struggles against continuing injustice as his life’s journey
teaches him acceptance and finally brings peace.

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About Me

I'm a semi-retired grandmother who spent much of her working life writing technical and instructional material. Recently, I co-authored eWriting for Profit, an eight-module self-teaching course for writers seeking to establish a business as an online freelance writer. I wrote Melanie’s Easter Gift (www.melanieseastergift.com) for my grandchildren, and the soon to be published “The Pencil Case’’, a partially fictionalized biography, to expose social injustice and historians racist lies. I love to write, edit, and help other writers publish and market their work. Check out the web community I run for writers and publishers at www.rainbowriter.com. Join free for access to useful services and resources.
On a personal level, I’m the proud mother of three and lucky to be still madly in love with my wonderful partner of 41 good years. And at 61, I figure I have about 40 years left to achieve my dreams and have fun, if my grandmother’s longevity and my own good health is any indication.